As the fall TV season started, I noticed I had little time to actually watch at home the few shows I like. So, I bought an iPod Classic to both time-shift and location-shift my TV viewing habits.
First, to get the shows, well... I found online downloads quite convenient, especially considering the ultimate destination of the video files would be my iPod. Since I'm in Canada, and thanks to the CRTC and some good lobbying, I can't buy them legally on any online service, I resort to BitTorrent downloads. Sites like EZTV and tvRSS are surprisingly good, making piracy even easier than buying the real thing. Once I get the files, I either use iSquint or the combo of Perian and QuickTime Pro.
As for the shows I already bought as DVD sets, I use the cross-platform tool HandBrake. This also works on shows recorded on a DVD recorder, which is useful when I watch local shows in Québec that aren't quite popular enough to be on BitTorrent.
So... How is it on a 320x240 screen? Actually quite good. The trick is to encode to those specific dimensions if you don't plan to watch the video on your screen. It seems the downscaler built-in the iPod is not strong on the interpolation, making the edges quite blocky if you play a 640x480 video file. And encoding it as a "bonsai movie" makes the video file smaller (not like I'm missing space on the 80GB drive, yet).
I was actually planning to talk about stuff like higher-level programing languages, continuations, micro-threading and copy-on-write object design, but I'm lazy. I'll go back on watching a video on my 2.5-inch screen...
Published on October 10, 2007 at 16:40 EDT
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